Guys, we are just getting KILLED by the Vietnamese and Chinese over here. I know at least two dozen children under the age of 10 who come to me every day, they say, bdub, we can't get work anywhere. We can sew. We have small fingers that make it easy to lace up shoes. We learned painting in day care and can easily apply noxious glue to undersoles. But the labor laws won't let us. And even if we could work, we can't work 14-16 hour shifts, and we can't even get paid a wage that is competitive with the Burmese or Indonesians or Pakistanis.

I know dozens of these poor children. They sit in class, lethargic, tired of the day to day classroom. Many of them are underfed. Why? No MONEY. They don't need lessons in math or science or history or writing. They need JOBS!

The next generation of manufacturing is here, available to us, at our fingertips, tugging at our pockets, sitting underutilized in day care centers. What the hell is a creative curriculum anyway? And yet, we do nothing. And those goddamn Asian kids are destroying what little we have left of manufacturing in this country.

Please, kill these idiotic child labor laws and minimum wage laws. Do it for the childrens. Do it for the country.

Don't hate our country. Hate the mouth breathing chuckle heads who are actively trying to run it into the ground, while other mouth breathing, six generations inbred Taters slam their grease covered paws together, grunting in approval, before going back to eating lice out of their genital folds and drooling.

Benevolent Misanthrope:OK, US - you do know that the rest of the world is noticing that, while you're the richest nation on earth, you're also working hard to be the most socially backward, right? And you're working hard to create a State where the haves are filthy rich while the have-nots are slaves, with no real middle class. Right? You do see that. Right?

Benevolent Misanthrope:Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), who championed a measure in March 2011 that would not only allow kids as young as 12 to get jobs, but would also allow employers to pay children less than the minimum wage.

OK, US - you do know that the rest of the world is noticing that, while you're the richest nation on earth, you're also working hard to be the most socially backward, right? And you're working hard to create a State where the haves are filthy rich while the have-nots are slaves, with no real middle class. Right? You do see that. Right?

Peki:o5iiawah: What is being suggested by Maine (work permits issued to people as young as 12 (with parental consent) to work small amounts of time per week, is not this doomsday scenario where parents are yanking their kids out of school and sending them off to factories and stockyards. You're projecting this slope which doesn't exist and has little to do with what is being proposed.

Sure. Because I didn't see at least half a dozen kids drop out of high school to take several part time jobs to support their families. Because I didn't experience poverty as a kid, and know how easy it would be to get a kid to agree to work for his family if he thinks they are in danger (the whole stranger needs help with fluffy? Times that by about a thousand). Because I didn't get a work permit myself as a kid, and get subjected to all sorts of under-the-table nastiness (up to and including unsafe business practices that resulted in injuries to myself and another worker) and pressure because it's just a law that doesn't matter if it's not enforced.

No. This is wrongheaded, and we need to cut this off at the pass. We ought to be going the other direction, making it as easy for kids to stay in school as long as they want. The whole association of earning an income with being a good person is ridiculous and we need to stop it. Earning money does not build character; it simply shows you how to manipulate the world.

Started working at a fairly young age. My brainwashing toward my eventual manipulative self started at around 8 when I received an allowance for general responsibilities; keeping my room clean, taking out the garbage, help push the lawn mower in the summer, rake in the fall and shovel the entry to the driveway in the winter when it snowed. If we wanted to make a little extra money, we could shovel all of the driveway, weeding in the garden, or do our own laundry.

By 12, I found myself in Teheran with my brother and mom. At .15 a piece, I ran the bottles game for 2 years in school, racing out of my classes to pick up the coke bottles left behind by the affluent kids then cache them in lockers during the day; cash them that evening before going home. Pretty good haul at roughly 5-7 dollars a day! My greed and desire for world domination- and my first five speed Raleigh-- was just too great to be sated with a fiver once a week that I had been still getting at home so I expanded selling cold drinks, barbecued ears of corn, and American made stuff (clothing, pencils, odds and ends we brought with us but outgrew) at a nearby park. In the winters, my brother and self took cue from our hosts and shoveled apartment roofs. Did some time carrying bricks for our landlord, worked in a family run business manufacturing shoe fittings that kept one from falling on the ice.

Now hardened in the sweatshops of Iran, I came back to the United States undefeatable ready to take my place amongst the industrial giants: paperboy, newspaper ad stuffer, a humbling stint at McDonalds, babysitter and kid watcher, and finally honed down through an endless series of dishwashing gigs only to reinvent myself as the malevolent, manipulative bastard that I have become today.

Hmm, letting 12-14 year olds having something like weekend jobs as grocery store baggers at a lower than normal wage (provided the unions let them) sounds like a nifty way for kids to get some spending money.

Newsflash: Your snowflakes aren't that precious. They will not die or suffer permanent injury if asked to do some chores at age 15. Or if they get paid for it.

Everyone here agrees with that. But heaven forbid the law comport with reality.

Work your child 70 hours a week with academics and piano lessons? Win Tiger Mom of the Year. Let him earn a few bucks doing 5 hours a week as a stockboy during the summer? Punch your ticket to the seventh level of Hell, you child abuser.

Educators Sue to Ensure Voters Have All the Facts on Rex Sinquefield's Extreme Ballot Initiative

Stop Child Labor In Missouri

Not the first time I have read about this issue yet I still don't know why/how this is a right wing thing.

For radical conservatives regulation is always bad. Child labor laws are generally recognized as good regulation but radical conservatives can't accept that so they have to find a way to argue against them. It's a simple mix of contrarianism and blind devotion to ideology.

In some respects, I think it's a good thing that the agenda needle keeps migrating farther into the crazy zone. The radicals, who tend to hold sway in more than a few primaries, will keep nominating crazier and crazier candidates. Makes it easier to beat them like a drum in the general elections.

ficklefkrfark:Triple Oak: Employ all the kids you want, Maine, you're practically far enough away to be Canada and very little benefits are being seen from your state anyway. What's the major export, lobster?

Don't lump the rest of Maine in with this dipshat of a governor.

Been saying the same thing about WI....but then I go out and talk to my neighbors....

d23:Stone Meadow: Yep...like the massive Federal intrusion into every remaining aspect of American life it doesn't already intrude into as Americans recoil in horror from the GOP. Unintended consequences...how do they work?

I don't see any "massive Federal intrusion" into my life. "Massive Federal intrusion" is a complaint from corporate true believers, and quite frankly I want "massive federal intrusion" on corporations that can massively make my live bad, whether it be pollution, credit checks, or information brokering about me.

Massive federal intrusions, to Republicans:

1. Hey insurers, here's some money. Now you all subsidize contraceptives at 100%.

Imagine being 14 and looking for your first job. That manager looks at you and says, "I like you, kid, but you don't have any work experience. I have 12-year-olds who have been doing this for years lines up around the block for this position. I'm sorry, but I just can't help you out."

Absolutely no way that repealing or rolling back labor laws will result in the wholesale exploitation of children. No way, no how. Please disregard those elderly folks over there who actually worked in the New England mills or cannerys when they were children, themselves. Anything past 50 years is ancient history, totally irrelevant.

MindStalker:Felgraf: MindStalker: While the governor is stretching a bit to push for 12 year olds to get a job. I do think that making it easier for 15/16 year olds to get work experience even at a bit below minimum wage would benefit those kids in the long run. Right now its near impossible for 16 year olds to get a job as all the college kids have pushed them out of low positions.

Yes, if there's one thing this sluggish economy needs, it's a way for businesses to fire workers who they're paying full salaries to and replace with cheap, disposable, less-than-minimum-wage-paid-minors, who likely have even less of a clue as to what their rights are than the college kids do.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG.

You're a freaken moron. Have you ever tried to train a 15 year old to do anything. Its a farking headache. Pay them to work? They'd need to pay me their first couple of paychecks till they have shiat figured out. That said, businesses used to have no other choice but do that because there wasn't a ton of people willing to take their shiatty jobs, now they have college kids to fill the slack. I don't think a wage of $5 an hour would entice many businesses to hire, but its a start as most of these college kids don't have any work experience either nowadays.

Yes, and we all know how much wall-mart cares about having highly trained workers.

I_Am_Weasel:bdub77: Guys, we are just getting KILLED by the Vietnamese and Chinese over here. I know at least two dozen children under the age of 10 who come to me every day, they say, bdub, we can't get work anywhere. We can sew. We have small fingers that make it easy to lace up shoes. We learned painting in day care and can easily apply noxious glue to undersoles. But the labor laws won't let us. And even if we could work, we can't work 14-16 hour shifts, and we can't even get paid a wage that is competitive with the Burmese or Indonesians or Pakistanis.

I know dozens of these poor children. They sit in class, lethargic, tired of the day to day classroom. Many of them are underfed. Why? No MONEY. They don't need lessons in math or science or history or writing. They need JOBS!

The next generation of manufacturing is here, available to us, at our fingertips, tugging at our pockets, sitting underutilized in day care centers. What the hell is a creative curriculum anyway? And yet, we do nothing. And those goddamn Asian kids are destroying what little we have left of manufacturing in this country.

Please, kill these idiotic child labor laws and minimum wage laws. Do it for the childrens. Do it for the country.

timujin:Stone Meadow: Marcus Aurelius: I've been seeing it since Reagan took office. Something will have to give eventually. Unfortunately it will probably be really ugly when it happens.

Yep...like the massive Federal intrusion into every remaining aspect of American life it doesn't already intrude into as Americans recoil in horror from the GOP. Unintended consequences...how do they work?

Maybe it's still too early, maybe I haven't had enough coffee, maybe I'm just dense... but I can't figure out what this sentence is supposed to indicate.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), who championed a measure in March 2011 that would not only allow kids as young as 12 to get jobs, but would also allow employers to pay children less than the minimum wage.

OK, US - you do know that the rest of the world is noticing that, while you're the richest nation on earth, you're also working hard to be the most socially backward, right? And you're working hard to create a State where the haves are filthy rich while the have-nots are slaves, with no real middle class. Right? You do see that. Right?